by Gail Bowen
A group of women had come together just inside the door. To the right of them, standing in front of the glass case that housed displays from the Classics department, were Molly Warren and Solange Levy. Two facts were immediately apparent: Solange was in deep psychological trouble, and Molly was doing what she could to help. Back in her uniform of black jeans, T-shirt and Converse high-tops, Solange was beyond wired; she was blowing out all the circuits. She was talking non-stop. As she spoke, her hands chopped the air, and her feet danced like a boxer’s. Even her black, henna-shined hair seemed charged with manic electricity. Molly listened with an expression I had seen often: capable, concerned, but with her lips tight, insulating herself against the weaknesses of the flesh that beset the rest of us.
The moment must have been one of unimaginable horror for her, but Molly Warren, as she always did, looked as if she had just stepped off the cover of Vogue. If it seemed cruel to notice her appearance, it was also inevitable. I have never known a woman to whom personal appearance mattered more. She was not a beauty – Ariel’s chiselled good looks had come from her father – but Molly took meticulous care of what she had: her skin was deep-cleansed, rehydrated, and dewy; her Diane Sawyer haircut subtly layered and highlighted; her outfits chosen with care and knowledge. Whenever she glided into her Delft-blue outer office to pick up a file or take a phone call, we patients leaned towards one another and whispered about her unerring sense of style.
That night the silk suit she was wearing was soft grey with a mauve undertone like lilacs in the mist, and her simple grey Salvatore Ferragamo pumps and bag glowed as only seven hundred dollars’ worth of calfskin can. I imagined her selecting her ensemble in the morning, holding the bag against the suit, checking the match, not knowing that by day’s end she would be wearing her perfect outfit to a vigil for her daughter.
I pulled Taylor closer. She leaned across me to peer down the hall, then up at the huge expanse of glass at the front of the library. “I’ve been here a million times,” she whispered. “But never at night. It’s different.” Suddenly, Solange caught her attention. “What’s the matter with that girl over there?”
“She was best friends with the woman who died.”
“And she’s acting up?”
“Something like that,” I said.
As we watched, Molly opened her bag, took out a prescription bottle, removed a tablet and handed it to Solange. Meek as a child, Solange took the pill and put it under her tongue. Whether it was from exhaustion, medication, or the power of suggestion, she seemed to calm down. She whispered something to Molly, then walked over and joined Ann Vogel and Rae Colby, the director of the Women’s Centre.
Molly Warren looked as alone as anyone I had ever seen. She was not a person who invited physical contact, but I had no idea how to approach her except through an embrace. Her body was stiff and unresponsive, but she didn’t step away, so I held her, staring uncomprehendingly at the announcement of a lecture on the Eleusinian Mysteries the Hellenic Society was sponsoring and wondering what in the name of God to do next.
Finally, Molly took a step back. Her words surprised me. “I had a battle with myself about coming to this. It seemed wrong to be part of an event at which Ariel’s father wasn’t welcome.”
“Someone told you that?”
“Not in so many words, but Solange hinted that Drew might find the evening uncomfortable. I’m sure her warning was intended as a kindness.” Molly made a gesture of dismissal with her hand. “None of that matters now. I’m glad I came. Joanne, have you heard the rhetoric here tonight? It’s pretty virulently anti-male.”
I shook my head. “We were late.”
“Then you haven’t heard the rumours that are swirling around.”
“No,” I said, “but I can imagine they’re ugly.”
“They are,” she said. “And they’re irresponsible. Until we have the autopsy results, no one will know whether the crime was sexually motivated. But that’s the assumption made by almost everyone who’s talked to me. Suddenly all men are suspect.” Molly raised her fingers to her temples and rubbed in a circular motion. “Joanne, I don’t know what happened to my daughter in that archive room. At the moment, I lack the courage to imagine it. But there’s one thing I do know. I will not allow Ariel’s death to become an excuse for anybody to push a political agenda.”
“Should I talk to the organizers?”
“I already have,” she said. “I hoped I’d be able to say a few words to keep the evening in perspective, but I just can’t seem to form a coherent thought. That’s why I asked the organizing committee to find you. I know I’m putting you on the spot, but you and Solange are the only friends of Ariel’s from the university that I know. You’ve seen the state Solange is in. She’s promised she won’t do anything to make matters worse, but she can’t be counted on to do much beyond that.”
“You’d like me to say something to keep the focus on Ariel,” I said.
Molly gave me the physician’s assessing look. “If I’m asking too much, tell me.”
“You’re not asking too much,” I said.
She seemed to relax. When her eye rested on Taylor, she crouched down so that she could talk to her more easily. “I didn’t mean to ignore you,” she said. “My name is Molly Warren, and…”
“And Ariel was your girl,” Taylor said softly.
Molly’s intake of breath was sharp, the reflex of a woman feeling the probe on an exposed nerve. “Yes,” she said. “Ariel was my girl.”
This time when I reached out to comfort her, she waved me off. “I’m okay,” she said. “I just want to freshen up. Is there a ladies’ room around here?”
I pointed. “Down that hall and to the left,” I said. “Would you like me to go with you?”
She shook her head. “All I need is a little time alone and I’ll be all right.”
As I watched her elegant figure disappear, I thought that it was the first time I’d heard Dr. Molly Warren give a prognosis so far off the mark. I was relieved when Rae Colby joined me.
Rae was a solid, pleasant woman who moved slowly, laughed often, and fought the good fight with a fervour undiminished by thirty years in the women’s movement. She was fond of bright colours and chunky ethnic jewellery, but that night she was in ankle-length black, her only jewellery a heavy silver labrys pendant.
She gave me a slow, sad smile. “I’ve come to ask your daughter a favour, Jo.”
“Ask,” I said. “Taylor makes up her own mind about most things.”
Rae’s broad face creased with pleasure. “A woman after my own heart,” she said. She turned to Taylor. “Here’s the drill. Everyone at the vigil is supposed to have a candle, and I need you to help me hand them out.”
“I can do that,” Taylor said.
“Good.” Rae turned back to me. “The program is pretty informal,” she said in her low, musical voice. “I thought maybe we could all just walk out there together.” She gestured towards a willowy brunette standing close to the door. “You know Kristy Stevenson.”
“We’re on the University Development Committee together,” I said.
“Then you know how proud she is of the work the library does. We’re all sick about Ariel’s death, but Kristy has a double burden. The archives are her responsibility. I think she feels a need to be part of the memorial tonight. Anyway, in her non-university life, Kristy has a trio called Womanswork.”
“I didn’t know she was a singer,” I said.
“She paid her way through university playing in a punk rock band. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? She’s so elegant.”
“People are full of surprises,” I said.
“Aren’t they just? At any rate, the plan is to have Livia speak, then Womanswork sing, and then I thought you could talk. Did you and Dr. Warren agree about what you were going to say?”
“We thought… just some personal memories,” I said.
Rae’s brown eyes misted. “Better you than me,” she said. “I don’t think
I could get through anything personal. Anyway, after you’ve finished, Naama has a story she wants to tell. Then Solange wants a few moments to talk. I hope she’ll be okay. Molly Warren is her doctor, and apparently she gave her some kind of medication to bring her down.”
I looked over at Solange. She was gazing at the crowd in the library quadrangle, wholly absorbed in her private reverie. “She seems calm enough,” I said.
“Calm is good,” Rae said. “There’s a lot of emotion out there. We don’t need to add to it.” She fingered the silver labrys at her neck. “After Solange, I guess Womanswork will do another song, and Livia will announce the candle-lighting. Have I left out anything?”
“It sounds as if everything’s taken care of,” I said.
When Molly Warren returned, her lipstick was fresh and her jaw was set. “Let’s go,” she said, and she started for the door. The women in the doorway parted to let her pass; then they followed her outside.
Rae turned to Taylor. “Time to get moving, kiddo,” she said. “Those candles aren’t going to hand themselves around.”
In one of those cosmic ironies that twist the knife of grief, the night into which we stepped burned with beauty. The sun was low in the sky, and the horizon flamed, turning the water of Wascana Lake into molten gold. “Red sky at night, sailor’s delight,” Rae murmured. The sky might have glowed, but the concrete bulk of the library cast a shadow that plunged the mourners waiting for us into darkness.
Rae picked up a wicker basket of candles and handed it to Taylor. Her hand brushed the top of my daughter’s head in a lazy benediction. “It’s good to have someone from the next generation with us.”
Livia stepped to the microphone. We were long-time colleagues, but that night she surprised me. Even during the agonizing last months of her marriage, Livia had been much in demand by organizations wanting an expert on American politics who wouldn’t sabotage their pleasant lunch with dry history or legalisms. The day after her marriage ended, she had asked me to provide moral support at a lunch meeting she’d agreed to address months earlier. She was hungover and heartsick, but she still managed to sparkle her way through her set piece on the relationship between a leader’s character and his or her political policies. Wretched as she must have felt, Livia had come alive in front of the crowd. But the night of the vigil, as she adjusted the microphone, her hands were trembling so badly she had difficulty completing the manoeuvre. When she began to speak, she surprised me again. I was expecting another helping of New Age bilge, but she spoke from the heart.
Pulling her shawl around her, as if she were cold to the marrow, she began. “I would give everything I own not to be here tonight,” she said simply. “Ariel was my student, my colleague, my friend, my hope.” She looked down at the brilliantly coloured shawl as if seeing it for the first time. “Two weeks ago, she gave me this. ‘A thank-you,’ she said, ‘for everything.’ It was too much…”
I was puzzling over the ambiguity of Livia’s sentence when I realized that, although she was still standing in front of the microphone, she’d fallen silent. Ann Vogel was quick to react. She moved swiftly to the podium, draped her arm protectively around Livia’s shoulders, and led her back to the rest of the party. The whole sequence was over in a matter of seconds, but what I saw in the faces of the two women shook me. Livia was expressionless; her eyes had the five-hundred-mile stare of a shock victim. But Ann Vogel was – no other word for it – smirking. Then as quickly as it had appeared, the tableau was gone. Kristy Stevenson and Womanswork came forward quickly and the program continued.
The trio of women who made up Womanswork had a family resemblance: all three wore their dark hair centre-parted and brushed back to frame gentle faces, wide-set blue eyes, and delicately arched brows. They were in tank tops, black slacks, and platforms, and they moved with assurance. Kristy stepped up to the microphone. “We’ve chosen two songs tonight. Neither of them is ours. I wish they were. I wish I could come out here and tell you that we’d written lyrics that spoke to Ariel’s dreams or, even” – Kristy smiled sadly – “just a tune she hummed in the shower. The truth is I didn’t know her very well; she was at a fundraiser we did for the Dunlop Gallery a couple of weeks ago, and afterwards she came up and told me she had really connected with a song we did by Beowulf’s Daughters. It’s called ‘The Sparrow Knows.’ Here it is.”
The voices of Womanswork were strong, and the opening line was a grabber. “The sparrow knows that the meadhall moments are few.” As the trio sang, I followed Rae and Taylor’s passage through the crowd, warmed by the sense of community that enveloped them. Most women smiled; some reached up to Taylor, thanking her, including her. I had worried about bringing her. Now I was glad I had.
Ann Vogel’s tap on my shoulder was the proverbial rude awakening. “You’re next,” she said. My mind went into free fall. The only anchor I had was the song to which Ariel Warren had felt a connection, but as I listened to the words, I knew Womanswork was giving me what I needed. When I stepped forward, the sentences formed themselves.
“I don’t know which words in ‘The Sparrow Knows’ Ariel was drawn to,” I said. “Maybe all of them. But I know the line that resonated for me. ‘Darkness is our womb and destination,/Light, a heartbeat glory, gone too soon.’ My memories of Ariel begin and end with sunlight. The first time I saw her she was six years old. My daughter Mieka invited her to her birthday party. Mieka’s birthday is October 31 – Halloween – and Ariel came dressed as a sunflower. The yellow petals that circled her face were so bright.” I turned to Molly Warren. She smiled, acknowledging the memory. I drew a breath and carried on. “The last time I saw Ariel was this morning. She had taken her class out to that little hill by the Classroom Building.”
“I was there!” The voice that came out of the crowd was very young.
“You were lucky,” I said. “If you were in that class, you were being taught by someone who knew that all learning is an attempt to pass on the heartbeat glory of light. Tonight it may seem as if the darkness is overwhelming, but that doesn’t mean the light isn’t there. Ariel heard the call of lightness all her life. Let your memories of her turn back the darkness.”
Molly stood up and embraced me as I stepped back from the microphone. “That was just right,” she said. “I hope to God it was enough.”
As organizer of the vigil, Ann Vogel had appointed herself spokesperson for the students. I had feared she would lob some feminist firebombs, but all she managed was a wet, self-indulgent fizzle about how blighted her own academic future would be without Ariel Warren. Her narcissism was as sickening as Kevin Coyle’s, but I was relieved that she hadn’t ventured past her obsession with herself. She could have done harm. She didn’t, and I was grateful.
As Ann returned to her place beside Livia Brook, I thought we were home free. Solange had given Molly Warren her word that she would behave well, and she was a principled human being. She was in agony, but she would honour her commitment.
As she came to the microphone, she seemed to be in another time and another space. When she began to speak, I wasn’t surprised that she returned to what was obviously the best moment of her life. “Last New Year’s Ariel and I went to Mount Assiniboine. The air was sharp with the smell of fresh snow and pines. We were very happy: we knew summer would bring wildflowers, and we promised each other we would come back to see them, and that in autumn we’d return to see the larches turn to gold and, in winter, to see the valley fill again with snow.” She fell silent. Then she held out her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “I just wanted you to know that Ariel had many plans. I wanted you to know that she died fully alive.”
It was a stunning oxymoron. When Solange turned from the microphone and walked back towards us, a sob broke the silence. Rae Colby came out of the crowd, handed Taylor back to me, then Womanswork stepped forward to begin their final song. There were tears in Kristy’s voice, but her back was straight, and as she linked hands with the other women of the trio, I could feel th
eir strength.
“This is by the Wyrd Sisters.” Kristy said.
The song was “Warrior,” the story of a girl who, haunted by her failure to respond to a woman’s screams, ultimately transforms herself into a warrior who knows she must fight until “not another woman dies.” From the moment Solange had told me about her epiphany on the night of the massacre at L’Ecole Polytechnique, I had associated that song with her. As the trio’s voices floated high and pure on the still night air, I watched for her reaction. There was none; she had become a woman carved in stone.
When the song ended, Kristy leaned into the microphone. “Never forget Ariel,” she whispered, then she lit the candle in her hand and raised it into the darkness. “Never forget any of our fallen sisters. Never forget.”
I bent to put a match to Taylor’s candle and my own, and when I stood and faced the quadrangle again, the darkness was flickering with scores of tiny flames. Lighted from below, the faces of the mourners seemed alien and frightening. I drew Taylor closer.
Ann Vogel pushed past me towards the microphone. “Never forget,” she shouted. The words were Kristy Stevenson’s, but Ann turned the gentle elegy into an injunction, harsh with hate. “Never forget,” she said, brandishing her lit candle like a club.
As her words echoed over the courtyard, they detonated the rage that lay beneath the grief. The responses exploded in the sweet spring air. “Never forget. Never forget. Never forget!”
“No!” Molly Warren’s anguish was apparent. She started towards the microphone, but when she put her hand on Ann’s arm, Ann turned and locked eyes with Livia.